Weekends in Carolina (12 page)

He downshifted to a stop, looking both ways for cars and deer. He should really do the right thing and go up to the guest room and toss and turn on the ancient mattress with new sheets. Max’s mattress was probably no better, even if it did have Max on it.

They parked beside the farmhouse and he waited with Max while she let Ashes out into the yard. The dog came back in, went up to Max for a pat on the head and returned to his bed in the living room next to one of the baseboard heaters. When Max looked at him, eyes warm and wanting, he knew he would make the wrong decision. If she asked, if she even stepped forward with her hand out in invitation, he would end up in her bed instead of his own.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

M
AX
HEARD
A
SHES
huff as he collapsed in a heap on his bed.
Now or never
,
Maxine
. Tomorrow Trey would get in his car and drive back to D.C. She had let her cowardice get the better of her once and he’d walked away. If she wanted to wake up in the morning, look at a handsome man in her bed and think,
Look who I did,
she had to make more of a move than she’d made before.

She wasn’t asking him for forever.

When he turned to face her, good-night forming on his lips, she took a step forward, reaching for him. This time, instead of turning away from her, he took a step toward her, too, his arm out and mirroring hers. Neither of them said a word. He lowered his lips to hers and the decision was made.

His skin was warm in the chill of the farmhouse. Despite the hard planes of his face and the scratch of his stubble, his lips were soft. His grip was firm on her waist, his fingers digging into the muscles of her belly, though the pressure was pleasurable.

He pulled back a couple inches and she leaned into him. Right now, she wanted to follow him wherever he would take her. He put his fingers to her lips before she pressed them against his for another kiss. “I want you.” He paused. “Wanting you doesn’t change that I will sell this farm and never return to North Carolina again.”

She pushed his fingers away from her face with one hand and dug the other into the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him back down to her. “I know. That’s one of the things I like so much about you,” she said, kissing him. He opened his mouth again—maybe to say something, maybe not—and Max ran her tongue around the edges of his teeth.

Together, they stumbled through the living room to her bedroom, barely missing Ashes and banging into one of the doorjambs along the way. Walking while kissing and trying to fumble with the buttons on Trey’s shirt was going to get one of them hurt, but she didn’t care. Especially when she got access to his undershirt and, with one yank, had his shirts off and full access to the hot ridges of his stomach.

The backs of his knees hit the bed and he fell backward, with her on top and a loud “oof” escaping his lips. “I should complete the Tar Heel fan fantasy and leave your shirt on,” Trey said while pulling her T-shirt up and over her head. “But I’ve been wondering about a certain line of freckles since you stood in the kitchen wearing that low-cut top.”

Once her shirt was off, he rolled her over onto her back so that he was on top. A rush of cold air blasted her chest—bare except for her bra. She wanted this. She wanted him. Her bedside lamp flickered on and she blinked into the sudden brightness. Trey kissed a freckle in the indentation at the base of her neck. She tensed with anticipation. “If I don’t follow that path of freckles,” he said as he kissed his way down her sternum to the line of her bra, “I think I’ll be lost forever.”

The warmth of his lips against her cold skin sent shivers down her spine. The silliness she’d enjoyed in him while watching basketball was evident as he kissed patterns in her freckles around her chest and stomach, naming each one. A butterfly. A baseball bat. A crocodile. Like finding constellations in the sky, he said. She’d be irritated that he was so focused on her freckles except the expectations building in her blood made it hard to concentrate on any feeling other than desire.

When Trey stopped kissing the freckles on her stomach and started tracing lines with his tongue, her hips bucked. While he was licking his constellations into her freckles, he moved his hands to the fly of her jeans. A pop of the button and a rasp of the zipper and his hands were lifting the elastic of her panties.

She opened her mouth to speak, but all that came out was a sigh. It had been a long time....

He looked up at her. His lips were moist and his eyes hot. “Was that a good sigh or a do-something-else sigh?”

One finger was under the elastic, the edge of his nail resting at the bend of her leg. When she moistened her lips to respond, the finger edged a little closer to her folds. A little closer to where she wanted it. Wanted him. She coughed. “It was a good sigh.”

He pushed a second finger under the elastic and walked them up her hip until he hooked his fingers around the fabric and pulled her panties down a little. “More?”

Max nodded, happy to have him read her mind. Not that she had much of a mind left to read. Like the rest of her body, her brain was a pulsating mush of “I want” and “right there” and “a little to the left would be perfect.”

She lifted her hips so that he could slide her underwear and jeans over her butt. His hands were warm as they guided her jeans down her legs and off her feet. As he walked his hands back up her calves, his grip was strong enough she could feel it in her toes. He paused at her knees and started kissing the inside line of her legs. He slowed midthigh, the tingles of his mouth shooting up and down her body.

“I love the strength of your legs.” His breath was hot on her skin and her heels dug into the mattress, lifting her butt a little off the sheets.

He ran both his hands first up one of her legs and then up another. “Seeing you in a skirt was one of the bright spots of the funeral.” Then he ran his tongue up the lines of her muscles until his mouth was on her sex.

She clutched the sheets so hard that her fingers hurt. He pulled away a little and she scooted closer to him. He chuckled. “Tell me what you want.”

She lifted her chin and looked up at the ceiling. The words
I want you inside me
were on her lips but she couldn’t utter them. This should be easier than asking for the farm, and she’d said that repeatedly. Trey wanted to do this.
Just open your mouth, Max.

“Here?” A warm puff of air hit her sex as he blew gently, running his finger along the crease where the inside of her thigh met the skin of her labia.

No.
Oral sex was nice and she might want his mouth there later, but she wanted to feel the weight of him on top of her. To have the hair on his chest tickle her nipples and the length of him push into her. She wanted the feeling of fullness and warmth that his fingers couldn’t give her.

What was she worried about! This was sex; she couldn’t make a mistake. Everything was going to be good. Him on top and inside her would be better....

Instead, she nodded.

Even in the dim light of her lamp she could see the pleasure flood his eyes at her assent. He sucked and nibbled and licked and she moaned, but she wanted him to grasp on to her waist as he pushed into her while she invoked the heavens.

She’d stopped feeling and started thinking and, after that, the sex just went south for her.

When he pulled away to take his jeans off, she dug in her nightstand for a condom, but it was too late. When he finally pushed into her, the moment was gone. She could feel the pleasure of him sliding in and out, but the tingles had disappeared. Nothing but frustration was about to burst out of her. He cried out, bucked and then pulled out.

While he looked for a trash can to dispose of the condom, she banged her head against the pillow. She was pissed as all hell at herself.
This should have been easier than asking for a farm, Maxine.

He lifted the covers and they both slid under them, though she didn’t scoot over to snuggle against him and he didn’t reach out for her. In the instant before he turned off the lamp, she saw the confused concern on his face. Just as well the light was off; she wouldn’t know what to say to him.
You were okay, but you could’ve been better and it was my fault. Maybe I’ll ask you for the farm again. I managed to talk myself
into
that.

* * *

M
AX
’
S
BACK
WAS
probably as freckled as the rest of her and Trey might never get to enjoy it. Sometime between him stripping off her pants and his orgasm, something had gone seriously wrong. He didn’t know what it was, and her back to him wasn’t helping. Lothario he wasn’t, but he knew enough to ask what a woman wanted and act on it. He’d asked, she’d nodded and fireworks hadn’t gone off.

Perhaps he was expecting too much out of both of them. Maybe he was expecting too much out of sex. Which meant the joke was on him and his fear that Max would have expectations.

He ran his hand over his face, pulling his skin taut. The room was dark. There was no reason to hide his frustration. The part of him that had always found his father’s jokes about women distasteful wondered if he’d missed a “no, get off me.”

He replayed the evening in his head. Max hadn’t been scratching her nails down his back and biting his shoulder in pleasure, but she hadn’t been beating against him in pain, either. If she hadn’t been an
enthusiastic
participant, she’d at least been an
active
participant up to the end. He’d prefer enthusiastic.

The whole episode had turned into a buzz kill that made him want to slide out of bed and go...go where? Was he going to get out of her bed and walk upstairs to the bed he’d slept in when he was a teenager and sex involved his hand? Sex with his tenant in the farmhouse had been a mistake. Lying in bed wondering where he’d fucked up the fucking was his punishment.

When the sun came up tomorrow, they would wake up landlord and tenant. Seller and buyer. He either let the darkness bind the awkwardness to them or he defused it now. He turned onto his side so that he faced her back. “Whatever we did seemed to only work for one of us.”

She took so long to respond that he didn’t think she was going to. Finally, as his eyes were adjusting to the spare bits of moonlight streaming in through her window, he saw her pale back muscles shift. She sighed, then turned to face him. The moonlight wasn’t bright enough for him to read her expression, especially since her hair was wild about her face.

“I’m willing to try again,” he said. “I’m pretty open to ideas. It’s the house I grew up in, so pretty much any sex we have here is going to feel dirty to me.”

Moisture off her teeth sparkled when she smiled. It wasn’t a wide smile, but it was better than talking to her back. “It was fine.”

Fine?
His dick shrank by half. Apparently, neither it nor he was going to get another chance to do better than
fine
. Being the worst lay of her life at least would have meant he was memorable.

He may have trouble reading her expression, but his must have been crystal clear because she backtracked. “I mean, it was great, really. I didn’t, well, you know, but I could’ve and...”

But I could’ve.
It was a good thing shrinking by half meant there would always be some left, because otherwise his dick would have disappeared completely.

He snaked a hand through the sheets until he could rest it on her waist. Her skin was soft, and he wished his hand wasn’t their only point of connection. He liked the feel of her soft skin covering her hard muscles. Feeling the contrast between the two against the length of his body once wasn’t enough. He wanted to do it again. “Do you want to continue talking about this?”

“No.” Her tone left no room for argument, which was fine because he didn’t want to argue with her.

“Are you tired?” he asked.

She sighed and he could feel her start to roll over under his hand. He tightened and released his grip. “I’m not asking so I can be
fine
again.” Next time he was going to be better than fine, though he couldn’t believe he wanted to try for a next time after this conversation. He blamed his continued desire on freckles he still hadn’t seen. “Maybe we can talk about something else.”

She stayed where she was. “No, I’m not tired.”

“Why Max’s Vegetable Patch? Why not Max’s Vegetable Farm or Vegetable Garden?”

It had seemed a safe topic until she responded with a sigh and her hair blew away from her mouth in the shadows of the night. “My name is Maxine Patch Backstrom.”

Ah. It wasn’t a bad name, though a little cutesy for the Max he knew. “A family name?”

“No.” She rolled onto her back and he took the opportunity to slide closer to her, wrapping one arm around her. Just because the sex was
fine
didn’t mean they couldn’t enjoy lying in each other’s arms afterward. His body was warm, his face was cold and she was soft. Their
fine
could be a lot worse.

“My dad met my mom while he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. She was living in the mountains at the time and had been out hiking with friends.” She tilted her head closer to him, her hair tickling his neck and chin. As an experiment, he draped one leg over her, keeping the weight off and waiting for her to push it away. When she didn’t, he relaxed and felt her legs sink a little.

If he wanted to keep his mind off sex, it was a stupid move. Her wild hair was tickling his face and he knew there was a patch of copper just above his leg that had tickled his chin when he’d tasted her.

He could do better than fine.

“...Harmon’s Den.” Though if he wanted a chance at doing better than fine, he needed to pay attention when she was talking. “Mom was so sure I was going to be a boy that she didn’t even think of another name for me. Apparently, Max Patch is close enough on the trail to Harmon’s Den and Maxine was close enough to Max to satisfy her whim. Though they did name my brother Harmon.”

Trey slipped her hair off his chin while his mind caught up with what she was saying. “The name suits you.” He’d hiked Max Patch once and the view had been awe-inspiring enough to silence a bunch of college students and their black-bear jokes.

“I guess it does. As a kid I hated it—but mostly because teachers insisted on calling me Maxine and at least once a year some boy would think it was funny to call me Patchwork.”

“Probably because he had the hots for you.” If she had pigtails, he’d pull them right now.

When she laughed, the side of her breasts bounced against his chest. In the battle between his wounded ego and his libido, his libido was winning. Her hand touched his leg and gave it a gentle squeeze. His ego didn’t stand a chance.